On Unconscious Worldviews – Continued: Unconscious Unbelief (Column 194)

With God's help

In Column 191 I discussed the status of unconscious beliefs. I argued there that a person's views are those regarding which he reaches a conscious decision. The subconscious has no standing in our judgment of him in this respect. From this I also argued that the deeds of a latent believer do not constitute fulfillment of commandments (thus, for example, the atheist pioneers who drained swamps did not fulfill the commandment of settling the Land of Israel), since commandments require belief (see about this here, and in greater detail in my article here), and for this purpose belief means only conscious belief.

By contrast, I said that the prayer of an unconscious believer may perhaps count as prayer. The reason is that the question whether this is prayer depends on whether he is really standing before God or not, and not on his intentions and his awareness. As to whether he fulfills the commandment of prayer, I tended to answer in the negative, since fulfillment of a commandment depends on a person's conscious decision. But the question whether he is praying (even if he is not fulfilling the commandment of prayer) is an almost factual question: is he standing before the God in whom he in fact believes (even if not consciously), or not? I also elaborated on the issue of prayer in Column 192.

In this column I want to broaden and deepen the discussion somewhat regarding unconscious worldviews. As you will see, there are several fine distinctions here, and it is clear that the topic requires more systematic and comprehensive treatment. I present here only some preliminary thoughts about it.

Moral acts by an atheist

One can discuss in a similar way the status of moral acts performed by an atheist (in that column I dealt with a materialist). In Part III of the fourth notebook I discussed the basis of moral obligations. I argued there that without belief in God there is no valid morality. The question that arises in light of this is how to relate to moral acts performed by atheists.

I explained there that, to the best of my understanding, one may choose one of two interpretive possibilities regarding such people and such acts: a. They are not really performing moral acts at all, but merely behaving as they please (it just happens that they feel like doing good). Similar to a sheep that does good because that is how it is built and how it feels inclined to behave. b. They are latent believers. That is, deep down they actually believe in God (at least in the God of morality) and act morally by virtue of that, but because of certain arguments they reject this belief and live with an atheistic consciousness. Their belief is hidden and unconscious.

Notice that the implications of these two states are opposite. In possibility a, they are truly atheists, both on the overt level (the conscious one) and on the hidden level (the subconscious one). In possibility b, by contrast, they are latent believers. As a matter of fact, regarding the question whether they believe or not, the answer is apparently that they do believe. The commandment of belief (to the extent that there is such a commandment) they of course do not fulfill. But as regards the moral value of their acts, such belief seems sufficient to confer moral value on their acts. They decide to do this out of genuine commitment to morality (even if they do not understand or accept that belief must stand in the background).

Note that this is an intermediate state. These people really are committed to morality, and they made that decision consciously. But it is not philosophically grounded, for in their consciousness they are atheists, and as stated, without God there is no valid morality. Their belief in God apparently exists somewhere inside them, but they did not consciously decide regarding it. I argued here that this is enough for us to regard the acts as moral acts, but to sharpen the intermediate status of this situation I will say that if they were performing commandments with a similar consciousness (by virtue of hidden belief), these would not be commandments. Commandments have value if they are done by virtue of a conscious decision of commitment to the word of God, and the mere existence of hidden belief is not enough. Therefore, one who has not decided that he is bound by the divine command has no religious value in his commandments. This is unlike our evaluation of morality, whose dependence on God is philosophically true but not necessary for evaluating the moral act as such. Here intention and moral commitment are enough for us (respect for the command, in Kant's terminology).

Unconscious unbelief

I now want to engage in a similar discussion regarding the status of unconscious unbelief and its implications. Various questions around this topic have come up here on the site in several Q&As and comments literally in the last few days. Up to this point I have dealt with a latent believer who lives with an atheistic consciousness. I now ask how to relate to a person who, inwardly, is an unbeliever, but lives with the consciousness of a believer.

As background to the discussion, I will preface a brief reference to the prohibition of and do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes. In principle, one could interpret the prohibition as intrinsic and not as based on a concern (a prohibition against engaging in heretical subjects because they dull the soul or do something else to us, and perhaps simply because of neglect of Torah study). But at least Maimonides (see Sefer HaMitzvot, prohibition 47, and Laws of Idolatry 2:3) makes the prohibition depend on the concern that a person who lives like a believer and thinks he indeed is one may discover, through examining various arguments (scientific, philosophical, and others), that he is actually persuaded to change his position. On his view, the prohibition exists because of the concern that if a person engages in these subjects he may be persuaded and lapse into unbelief. For purposes of the discussion below, I will assume that conception.

The problem with the and do not stray prohibition: can a system forbid a person to examine itself?

In several places in the past I have already raised the problem with the and do not stray prohibition on reading external books and heretical materials. The main claim was that it cannot be right to forbid a person to clarify his path (see for example here and here). One cannot demand loyalty to a path that he has not examined and concluded is indeed valid and binding. Therefore a system cannot forbid a person to examine his relation to that very system. And what if he errs? There is indeed a concern that he may be drawn to mistaken views. True, but still only he can formulate his own position. By the same token, it may in fact be if he does not examine that he will arrive at mistaken views. After all, it is possible that the Jewish faith is not correct. As long as you have not examined, you will not know (and even afterward there is of course no certainty). The fact that I was born Jewish does not necessarily mean that this faith is true. Many people were born Christian, or worshippers of idols, and it is reasonable to demand that a person examine his path and not simply cling to the place into which he was born.

From these considerations it follows that even if Moses our Teacher, and perhaps even God Himself,[1] were to forbid this to me, I would not obey (in the spirit of By God, even if Joshua son of Nun himself were to tell me, I would not obey him. ("Even if Joshua son of Nun were to tell me this in His name, I would not obey him"), Hullin 124a). This is a logical contradiction, and one cannot accept it from any source whatsoever. But this claim is of course only hypothetical, since precisely for this reason I will never be willing to accept that God in fact commanded such a prohibition (for He would not stumble over such a trivial fallacy).

The problem with the and do not stray prohibition: is such a prohibition necessary?

So far I have wondered about the very possibility of a and do not stray prohibition, but now I want to raise a question about its usefulness and necessity. Think of a person who until now regarded himself as a believer, but has now encountered various arguments (philosophical, scientific, or otherwise) that persuaded him to abandon his faith. As long as he had not examined the various arguments he regarded himself as a believer, but one may argue that in fact he was never a believer to begin with, and only now did this become clear to him. One may therefore ask what his status was in the period before the change: was he a latent atheist (unconsciously), or should we view him as a believer who changed his mind?

Suppose now that because of the prohibition the person indeed did not engage with such subjects and materials. Let us further assume that this is a person who really would have changed his mind had he encountered those arguments. Is there any point to such a prohibition? The truth is that he is already an unbeliever even without being exposed to this, except that the prohibition prevents him from becoming aware of it. Is there any point in keeping a person in a state in which he is unaware of his true beliefs? (See about this briefly here.)

The meaning of this is that there is an either-way argument regarding the usefulness of such a prohibition: if this is a person who would be persuaded by the arguments, then there is no point in forbidding them to him, because even so he is already now a latent unbeliever. And with respect to a person who would not be persuaded by the arguments—there is no danger. Why forbid it to him if he would not come to unbelief even if he engaged with it?!

This is an additional implication of recognizing the state of hidden unbelief. Beyond the question how to relate to such a person and his acts (his commandments), it may empty the and do not stray prohibition of content.

Am I assuming that positions cannot change?

It is important for me to sharpen a fundamental point in the background of this discussion. I do not intend here to assume that a person forever believes whatever is ingrained in him from birth and cannot change his positions. If that were so, there would be no value at all to a person's positions, and certainly no basis for judging him for them. He did not choose them; he was born with them. My claim here is different: if a person changes his positions, then clearly up to the moment of change he was a believer and now his beliefs have changed. But if he was a believer only because he had not yet been exposed to certain arguments, and from the moment he was exposed to them he understood that they persuaded him, then there is room for the claim that he had already been an atheist earlier. After all, on those terms he was not a believer from the outset.

A similar distinction exists in contract law as well. If a person changes his mind after signing the contract, that does not help; he remains bound by what he signed. But if facts are discovered that were already true at the moment of signing and he was unaware of them, and these are facts such that had he been aware of them he would not have agreed to sign, then this is a mistaken transaction. He did not sign on those terms, and therefore the contract is void. This is an analogy to the distinction I suggested with respect to belief as well. A person who is exposed to arguments that existed all along and were valid in his eyes all along, except that until now he was not aware of them and therefore regarded himself as a believer—would it not be correct to say that even his belief until now was in the category of a mistaken transaction, and that in truth he had always been a latent and unconscious atheist? This is unlike a person who changes his positions only now, who is indeed regarded as a believer until this moment.

This raises the question of changes in position in general. Does not every change of position stem from exposure to new arguments? I think not. Arguments are always built on premises. I am speaking of a person who is exposed to new arguments based on his ordinary premises, and regarding him I wonder whether he too had until now been a latent atheist. By contrast, a person who decides to change premises is apparently a person who changed position only now, and until now he was a genuine believer.[2]

Belief as a state of consciousness

The claim regarding hidden unbelief assumes that unbelief is a factual state and not the result of a decision (see such distinctions at the beginning of the column). On the site here a question was raised that touched precisely on this assumption:

I saw in the above that you write that a belief which a person holds, though if he knew a certain fact he would stop believing, is not considered belief. And I wonder why, for belief is the *result*—that he thinks this is how things are—and the proofs are only the *causes* that might bring this about, and now that he does not know contrary proofs he truly believes his present conclusion.

Therefore I think one should certainly refrain from reading books of heretics and the like, because as a result his faith may be damaged, and since the Sages knew that this damage is unjustified they took care that he remain in his correct faith. And even if perhaps there is no moral justification for this, there is practical justification for it, like a father who warns his son away from a dangerous place to which his son may be enticed unfairly.

Is there some special requirement that faith come specifically from reasons that are true, comprehensive, exclude all alternatives, and persuasive?

The questioner treats belief as a state of consciousness, and by that definition belief is of course what is present in consciousness. By contrast, my claim here is that belief is an inner state, and it does not always find expression in our consciousness. As stated, this depends on which practical implication is under discussion. The question whether he is a believer or an atheist may affect the status of his commandments, or our very attitude toward him (for example, whether to count him toward a prayer quorum, as in Column 191).

I would only note that the question at the end of the passage—whether belief must come from true reasons—is not relevant here. My claim is that belief must be based on the reasons that are acceptable to the person himself (that is, arguments that persuade him when he encounters them), whether they are true or not. That is what determines whether he himself is a believer. The question whether his reasons are true is not accessible to us. That itself is the subject of dispute. I already explained above that it is not plausible to make our judgment depend on a criterion of such objective truth.[3] See also my remarks here and here.

Therefore the questioner's other claim here—that the Sages relied on knowledge of the truth and therefore allowed themselves a paternalistic approach—also has no justification, for two main reasons: 1. Even if they know the absolute truth, if I do not formulate a position by myself, my position has no value and my acts do not deserve credit, because I did not really decide on them. 2. They too were human beings, and therefore they have no way to know with certainty that they are not mistaken. Objective truth is not accessible to any human being with complete certainty.

That last claim of course does not mean that I am a skeptic. In my view, a reasonable claim is acceptable, and there is no need whatsoever for certainty (if only because we have no possibility of attaining it). But once I have doubt and not certainty, I can never allow myself to coerce another person not to examine himself, to close off from him the path to formulating a position of his own, and to do it for him. My claim is that paternalism cannot be justified unless someone is convinced with certainty (which is impossible). Beyond that, I have already noted that imposing the truth (even if it were certain and objective) on someone who did not formulate it himself has no value, because it is not really his position.

The connection to the previous column

My claim here raises the question of a contradiction with what I wrote in Column 191. There I argued that unconscious belief is not belief, whereas here I am apparently claiming the opposite: that unconscious unbelief is also unbelief. What is the difference? Do we take into account what is ingrained in our subconscious as well, or only the beliefs and views that are conscious?

On its face, there is no contradiction. Even regarding unconscious belief I said that one must distinguish between the factual discussion and the discussion from the standpoint of Jewish law. Factually, the person is a believer, but from the standpoint of Jewish law his acts have no religious-legal value. Therefore he is indeed praying, but he is not fulfilling the commandment of prayer. If so, the same applies to unconscious unbelief. Factually, he is an unbeliever. The question is whether there is a plane that parallels the second plane (the value of the commandment). If that person keeps commandments, this ostensibly has value because consciously he decided to be religious. But my claim is that this is a mistaken decision, and therefore by the law of mistaken transaction it nullifies the value of the commandments he performs.

It occurred to me now that perhaps this is the meaning of the distinction in the Talmud in Kiddushin 40b:

Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai says: Even if a person was perfectly righteous all his days and rebelled at the end, he has lost his former merits, as it is said: “The righteousness of the righteous shall not save him on the day of his transgression.” And even if a person was thoroughly wicked all his days and repented at the end, his wickedness is no longer mentioned, as it is said: “The wickedness of the wicked shall not cause him to stumble on the day he turns from his wickedness.” But then let him be regarded as having half sins and half merits? Reish Lakish said: This refers to one who regrets his former deeds.

A completely righteous person who later leaves religion is regarded as someone who changed his views, and therefore his commandments until then were indeed commandments, whereas from now on they are not. But one who repudiates his former deeds—that is, it becomes clear to him retroactively that he never believed (his belief was a mistaken transaction)—this is what the Talmud means by one who rebelled at the end, and he indeed loses even the merits he accumulated until now. Even the commandments he performed during the period when he was a conscious believer (and an unconscious unbeliever) are not counted for him as commandments.

It follows that with respect to commandments both conditions are required: that there be belief arising from a conscious decision, and that this decision not be made in error (that is, that there also be belief at the subconscious level). Hence there is no contradiction between what I say here and what I wrote in Column 191.

Another case: conscious belief negated by mistaken arguments

The question here dealt with a different situation from the one I have described thus far. Yaakov asked:

If a person makes an error in calculation, and if we were simply to point out his mistake he would immediately accept it and correct it, can one say that even though at the moment he has not noticed his mistake, the very fact that he would certainly correct it if he became aware of it means that already now he holds the true view in his subconscious and is therefore considered a believer/

Every unbeliever or idol-worshipper or heretic, if only he becomes aware of the truth, will repent (unless he is wicked and believes what he wants to believe). Is your discussion a general one about all types of unbelief that arise from error, or only about unbelief that arises from this kind of error?

And I answered him:

Here I was not speaking about someone who will be exposed to correct arguments, but about someone who has a correct intuition and abandons it because of mistaken arguments. That is not the same thing. You are speaking about people who have no intuitive starting point of any kind and who formulate their view on the basis of arguments. People of that sort, who formed a position on the basis of mistaken arguments and arrived at atheism, are atheists (otherwise there are no atheists in the world). I was speaking about someone who has belief in his heart, but by virtue of mistaken arguments finds himself compelled to abandon it.

What I meant was the following situation. Think of a person who has no intuition of his own and who formulates a position in light of certain arguments. Here what determines matters is his consciousness, and the position at which he arrived is his position. If the arguments are mistaken (from the standpoint of reality itself), that is an objective judgment, and I have already noted that there is no room to judge a person or an act on the basis of objective truth. But in Column 191 I was speaking about a person who has an intuition X and rejects it by virtue of mistaken arguments (if he were aware of this, he himself would be persuaded that this is so). For example, a person endowed with a dualist intuition (which accepts the existence of spirit), but who rejects it because of the argument that neuroscience shows materialism to be correct. I explained there that neuroscience does not show this; rather, this is only an effective methodological assumption that is accepted there. The leap from a methodological assumption to a claim about reality is an error. If that difference were explained to such a person and he understood that he had erred, what is his status now, before this has been explained to him? My claim was that in such a case there is room to say that nevertheless his true position is X.

Note that this is not the situation with which I dealt here. Here I treated a person who in his consciousness is a believer and in his subconscious an atheist (a Jew protected by the and do not stray prohibition), or alternatively a person who in his consciousness is an atheist and in his subconscious a believer (like the moral atheist). But now I have presented a case in which the person believes in X (dualism) in his consciousness as well, but there are arguments that in his mistaken view compel him to deny it. Here there is belief consciously too, but it is negated. This is a subtle distinction, but it seems to me that it has significance.

[1] Of course, if He Himself forbids examining His existence, then He exists. But the problem arises in the case of an explicit prohibition in the Torah, while I am asking whether the Torah comes from Him (for if He does not exist, then the Torah was not written by Him either).

[2] In another formulation, this is the difference between categorical change and change within the existing paradigm. See the booklet containing Stephan Körner's article, "Categorical Change and Philosophical Argument," which appeared as part of Proceedings of the Israel National Academy of Sciences, 1970.

[3] If we make judgment depend on truth itself, then there are no unbelievers, because everyone is a latent believer, since the truth is that there is God. On the plane of objective truth, this discussion is entirely devoid of content.